Ukraine's new acting president Oleksander Turchinov said today that the country's new leader wanted relations with Russia - a central issue to last week's demonstrations - to continue on a "new, equal and good-neighbourly footing that recognises and takes into account Ukraine's European choice".

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will travel to Ukraine today, where she is expected to discuss measures to shore up the ailing economy, which the finance ministry said required $35 billion in foreign aid over the next two years.

On Independence Square in central Kiev, barricades of old furniture and car tyres remained in place, with smoke rising from camp fires among tents occupied by protesters vowing to stay until elections on May 25.

The mood among the few hundred on the square was a mixture of fatigue, sorrow for those killed last week, and a sense of victory after three months of protests.

A large video screen by the side of the stage was showing the faces of the dead, one after another, on a loop.

Demonstrator Grigoriy Kuznetsov, 53, said: "Now is not the time for celebrating. We are still at war. We will stay here as long as we have to."